Events like the Big Feastival are at the mercy of the good old British weather
– but thankfully the sun shone.

It takes all year to plan and organise the Big Feastival, the mammoth food and family knees-up that took place here on the farm last weekend, but by the time it comes to physically building it – which only takes a week or so, there’s little I can really do. All the decisions have been made.

So, with the fuse smouldering and the whole thing primed and ready to explode, I retired to a safe distance and spent the weekend before last in the south of France, where I devoted myself to looking at online pictures of the mudbath that was Leeds Festival, rubbing my chin and not saying very much to anyone.

No matter how much time and effort goes into organising an outdoor event: whether it’s a barbecue, a picnic or a full-on festival, the single thing that matters the most on the day is the weather: the unreliable British weather that has caused many of our great seaside towns to crumble.

Farmers of course always win or lose by meteorological conditions. Last summer all it did was rain. The summer before that, it didn’t rain at all. Both disastrous, but at least over the course of a whole season there’s time to adjust and react – with events it’s potluck boom or bust.

So by the time I got home on August Bank Holiday Monday I was checking the long-range weather forecast, approximately twice an hour. But we were lucky, we were blessed with golden September sunshine and immaculate sunsets that helped to make the event the success that it was.